


Rationed Tears Of The Billowing Wind

by XtaticPearl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Avengers Feels, Bucky Barnes Returns, Falling In Love, Heavy Angst, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Iron Man 3, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Past Relationship(s), Post-Iron Man 3, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Second Chances, Self-Harm, Slow Build, Suicide Attempt, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony told Pepper that he'd fix her, he had been confident about his brain. He had done it once, inebriated, so he could do it again, right? But he hadn't calculated destiny or errors that he couldn't have foreseen. When you lose something you almost had, you lose everything you always thought you had. </p><p>When Steve told Bucky that he was his friend, he had been confident about his heart. He had lived through it once, with ease, so he could do it again, right? But he hadn't calculated the past or the horrors he hadn't imagined. When you gain something you cannot have, you gain nothing you'd lost for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rationed Tears Of The Billowing Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [padawanewan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/padawanewan/gifts).



> You read the warning tags, right? Good. If not, please do? 
> 
> This one's for that one awesome bro and friend I made through this wonderful site. Bro, I know that I promised you a WinterIron fic as part of our 'game' in the last fic, and that'll come, but I just had this idea in my head and had to get it out. I hope that you like it <3 Here we go!

A feet was an insignificant measure of distance for someone who flew into an endless ocean of skies and burning stars every day.

A missed feat though, that was the distance between dreams and nightmares. 

His outstretched hand was not enough. Never enough. His fingertips were quivering with the strains, stretching and trying to outgrow his skin, all in an attempt to hold on. Just hold on, he screamed, though no voice emerged from his frozen mouth. His life was right there, reaching up to him, an inferno surging beneath the outline. He had to fill that one feet, cross his own limit and leap. 

It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

Tony Stark woke up in a cold bed with sheets sodden beneath him, hands clutching the damp in an attempt to squeeze the life taken from under his feet. There was no sound longer than his gasps, no words clearer than his stutters and no warmth closer than the tears hugging his cheeks.

He was alone. Alone in a bed larger than a coffin. Alone in a house larger than a tombstone. Alone in a life longer than a funeral.

"Sir, do you require any assistance?" JARVIS spoke up, in a voice that tried to pierce through the buzzing in Tony's ears, "You are safe, Sir. You are at home, in your bed. There is no more danger. Do you require any assistance, Sir?"

What assistance does a burning pyre ask for? Could an AI, however evolved he may be, bring back a lost life? Could the smartest man of the country bring back the only one who mattered to him? There was no assistance for the undead. There was no solace for the lost souls.

"No, J," he croaked, voice dried up from the yells in his nightmare, "I'm fine. I'm fine."

Fine was not a feeling. It wasn't happy, sad, coping or breaking. It was just a meaningless word for the most meaningful of silences. And Tony was fine, despite having everything and nothing in his life, he was fine.

He knew from muscle memory that the sun hadn't broken the horizon yet and the sky was still frosted by lone stars, flung between expanses of mourning darkness. But it would all be taken soon, with the first ray of sunlight touching the city, waking the sleeping eyes to another day of struggles and shoes. He stood up from his bed, feet finding the coarse carpet underneath numb soles, and crossed over the room. There was a sole yellow light peeking from the ceiling, guiding his form to the checkered paper on the wall. 

It was a calendar, a piece of paper that shouldn't have found place in the tech-savvy bedroom of Tony Stark. He listlessly picked up the red marker from the side table beside it and opened the cap, breathing in the fuming smell of ink for a moment. He watched as the red cut out the black printed  **29** on the paper, the previous red crosses welcoming another fallen day. 

"I miss you, Pep," Tony whispered as he let himself stand there, reading through the 58 days he had struck out, knowing that those were 58 days of life he didn't deserve, "I'm sorry."

And that was how the day began for Tony Stark, who padded back across his room to his bar cabinet. This was the new life of a Pepper-less Tony. A man whose genius had cost him his only shot at redemption. A man who had almost had it all before losing it to one uncorrected calculation.

Maybe he should have crossed that one feet into the fire when he had had the chance. Maybe then he wouldn't have had to live a life as the murderer of the one person he should have protected.

Maybe that one feet might not have cost him Pepper.

\---------------------------------------------------------

One hand was invisible in a throng of arms, especially for a man who led those arms into battle. 

A slipped hand though, that made the difference between a friend and a foe.

Every jab into the bleeding kevlar made his hand clench, further and further, till it was a tight grasp of nothing. The fearful eyes of a falling memory faded into the fearless stare of a towering machine. Because that was what he had seen, despite the shimmering tears pushing back into grey eyes or a lull between punches. A machine holding broken pieces of his best friend. There was no easy smile, no family in his eyes, no 'punk' in his shoulder grab. But it had still been him. And he had become this because of one slipped hand.

The bag lost the battle against his fists and flew across the room, crashing into its predecessor still keeled over. The resounding crash did nothing to pierce the looped question in Steve's ears.

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

Steve had a million answers to that question. Bucky was his best friend, his family, his partner till the end of the line. Bucky was the happiness of the past, the longing of the present and the hope for the future. Bucky was the man who had followed Steve Rogers when the world had looked up to Captain America. Bucky was Sergeant James Barnes. 

Bucky was the Winter Soldier.

He was also the prey Steve was hunting now. Blinking against the glaring lights of the gym, Steve unclenched his fists, reveling in the tautness of their grip. He wouldn't slip this time. He wouldn't let go of an outstretched hand this time. He had fallen out from planes, run into exploding buildings and gone toe-to-toe with tentacled aliens. There would be no broken railing that would defeat him this time.

But what if it were something else, somebody else who defeated him? What if the one he was trying to rescue wasn't there anymore? What if Sam was right, the friend he was scrambling for turned out to be just a ghost of a forgotten name? 

He walked over to the wooden bench across the cold hall, his footsteps muffled by the settled dust of an ignored gymnasium. Opening the small blue bag that held his belongings, he pulled out the thin silver body. 

 _Amsterdam_ , he read the location on the phone. They had traveled through locations of every kind - the exotic, the punishing, the reminiscent and the revolting. Sam and Steve had scoured through the dumpsters of the dark, motels of the jaded and villages of the unsocial, all to find the man Steve insisted he hadn't lost yet.

And now they were in Amsterdam. Tomorrow maybe they'd jump through the lanes of Maastricht. A month later, maybe they'd have to go under the trenches of a swamp in an unnamed city. Steve could see the weariness seep into Sam, inch by inch, every day. It wasn't fair, but Steve hadn't claimed to be fair. It hadn't been fair that he had gotten the glory and the glitz of a hero's welcome while Bucky had laid on a chair through decades, watching himself get turned inside out. Life wasn't fair, never to those who missed a hand.

Flinging the bag onto his shoulder, he walked away, out from the gym and towards the motel Sam was supposed to be waiting in. His phone rang and he picked it up without batting an eye.

"I'm coming Sam," he informed without preamble, "Wait up."

Because that was what he could do now. Wait, patiently, doggedly and endlessly wait. Till he got a chance to bridge that lost distance and grab the falling hand. Till he got the last bit of fortune to hold on to a piece of his past.

Maybe he would catch on to that distance today. Maybe that was not all a myth, that a man who had survived a frozen ocean could survive anything. Maybe he would survive this chance too, to pull a lost hand out from a hardened facade.

Maybe one hand would be enough to get him back Bucky.

\------------------------------------------

Sam Wilson knew, the very minute he agreed to go on this wild goose chase, that it would all be pointless till they found a way to restrain the Winter Soldier. Cap believed that there was still a Bucky beneath the long hair and the all-black costume. But Sam could see the steel of decades of coding in the unflinching stare from underneath the long hair. He could see the hardened assassin under the costume.

After 32 days of searching for Bucky Barnes, they had found him in an abandoned warehouse of Hague. It had been earlier than they had thought. Wearing a red Henley's and a hunted look in his eye, the Winter Soldier had flickered between the assassin and the friend when Steve had stepped forward with his open eyes and unguarded smile.

Sam had seen the moment of decision before Steve had. He had seen the prancing stance before Steve had gotten a chance. Maybe it was his objectivity. Maybe it had been his sanity in the most insane of situations. Whatever it was, it had saved Steve Rogers from the attack of a scared Bucky Barnes.

Which probably did not explain the current situation. Sam had seen the chance, seen the attack before it happened and had used the only technique he had found possible.

"Is there any way we can break that vice?" Steve asked in the most controlled voice, which was surprising seeing that Bucky now lay unconscious, his hands held together in the patented Stark vice. Which had been tested on every force possible and had been verified to be the Unbreakable Lock of the century.

It had been tested on Thor, Steve knew. Which meant that Bucky wouldn't be able to break it and neither would Steve and Sam be able to open it, seeing how they had lost the sensor key.

"Well, not  _us_ ," Sam shrugged sheepishly, looking at the calm body before him, "But there is one person who will be able to break this thing."

Steve didn't have to wait to hear who it was. Only the creator would know it. The only person who had a master sensor that could break open the vice. The only person he knew who had the brains and resources to help them with anything further.

"I'll call Tony," Steve said in a quiet voice, flipping out his phone and dialing a number he hadn't used since the news of Pepper's funeral.

It had been close to three months now. But Steve knew that Tony wouldn't have been over it yet.

He just hoped that the challenge of Winter Soldier would be enough to lure Tony into releasing Bucky Barnes.

The ring ended into an open line and Steve took a deep breath before he spoke.

"Hi, Tony?"

**Author's Note:**

> I am literally screaming at myself. But when an idea enters your head, it doesn't leave till it has eaten your heart and soul. Please do let me know any feedback you have? Lots of love, my darlings!


End file.
